Surveys find a lot more Chinese online

BEIJING, July 21 (UPI) -- The number of Chinese with home Internet access has jumped while the gap between urban and rural Chinese has also grown, Gallup surveys indicate.

Between 2007 and 2009, the number of households that are online grew 9 percent, Gallup reported, with about 90 million people gaining access. By 2009, 42 percent of city-dwellers had home Internet, up 14 percent in a year, while Internet access was still a luxury in the countryside with only 11 percent online.

Gallup said it expects continued growth in Internet access through computers and mobile devices. One major spur is that access becomes more valuable as more people get online and communicate electronically.

The Gallup Organization has been conducting continuous surveys in China since 2004, interviewing between 3,700 and 3,400 people 15 and older each year. The margin of error for information based on the entire sample is 2.2 percentage points.

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